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Would be super interested in what kind of functionality you're specifically looking for, or is it more that existing functionality doesn't hit the mark? Our goa

by idanb 8y ago

Would be super interested in what kind of functionality you're specifically looking for, or is it more that existing functionality doesn't hit the mark? Our goal with this release is to get some great feedback so we can make Dream better, and more useful for users so please let us know what you'd like to see! To respond to some of your other questions - one thing that we've noticed isn't super clear is that Dream is not doing any form of desktop sharing. We integrated chromium at the native layer (by way of a forked version of CEF) and the content views are all web browsers. This allows for a level of integration with the rest of our stack in a way that is difficult or impossible to achieve if you're doing desktop sharing (we actually built desktop sharing, but disabled it in the build for now until we can solve some inherent usability problems). We're big fans of Bigscreen, but I think they're heavily shifting their focus on entertainment and watching movies in VR together. Also, we were working on Dream for 1.5+ years when Dash was announced and were excited to see some similar ideas there! We're trying to find ways to make VR as a viable solution for remote working and collaboration, and this has led many hard decisions we've had to make - especially as we've decided to build the entire stack. This obviously meant it took us a lot longer to get something out there, but as a result Dream is a lot more intuitive and seamless than you might expect. For example, our keyboard was heavily inspired by an early Google VR experiment we saw, but after building out a version of it we quickly understood why it wasn't getting people to a viable text-entry solution. We built our own collision system and "interaction "engine" to allow views and apps in Dream to respond at the event level of "touch start, touch end" similar to what you'd expect in building an iOS app - and underlying this the interaction engine would be updating the collision / position of everything in real time. As a result, we've seen people hit 30-40 WPM on our keyboard due to the tactile cues we've included (audio/haptics) as well as a kind of activation region, which allows you to really time and feel out the key press. Definitely hard to describe this or show this in videos since it's all happening at 90 FPS - but hey, it's a free download so give it a shot! Dream never asks you to revert to your monitor or take off your headset, this was a strict rule. This means that everything from logging in, to inviting someone new to your team had to be possible in VR. To accomplish this, we create a kind of chromium integration with Dream so that we could run web views that manipulated our engine directly. To us, asking the end user to remove their HMD for any reason is equivalent to asking them to restart their computer - it's really not acceptable. Our goal is to demonstrate how immersive technologies like virtual reality can enable remote collaboration and communication use cases. Especially in terms of how VR, by comparison to existing 2D formats of video/voice, provides an improved layer of presence through nonverbal communication cues.

mattnewport 8y ago
Ah, ok, yeah that wasn't clear to me from the articles I saw, it sounded like desktop sharing. I went to the BigScreen talk at Oculus Connect and yeah it's pretty clear that their focus at the moment is on people watching video content together in VR but we have used it with some success for code reviews (desktop sharing is key there, I can jump between Visual Studio and the Unity Editor). Your keyboard sounds interesting and I'll have to check it out but to be honest it's not a big selling point for me as a touch typist: I don't have any trouble using my keyboard in VR. We do have some non touch typists on the team though and it's not always convenient to put your Touch controllers down to type so I can see it being useful. My ideal VR collaboration app would support at least solid desktop sharing support, well implemented VR whiteboards (including annotation on the shared desktop) and 3D sketching like Quill / Tilt Brush. We use whiteboards and 3D sketching in Rec Room but they're quite primitive. The sketching doesn't have to match a dedicated sketching app but should be better than Rec Room. It would also be useful to be able to easily import 3D assets for review, Dash support for GLTF is looking like a good implementation of that. Custom environments would also be useful for us so we could do collaborative design of environments for our own VR app.
- gfodor 8y ago
  You should give Hubs a try, it's a WebVR based collaboration and communication tool we're working on at Mozilla. Screen sharing is behind a feature flag (and not quite working atm) but you can bring in GLTF models, images, and do simple 3d drawing. Also, by being the browser, it avoids a lot of the installation and coordination steps of native apps, and works on phone and PC. https://hubs.mozilla.com https://hubs.mozilla.com
- idanb 8y ago
  I was actually at that session as well! It was a bit surprising for me to hear that they're taking such a strong stance with regards to shared movie watching, but generally it's always felt that Bigscreen has been tuned for gamers / entertainment type use cases. Totally hear you with regards to being comfortable touch typing while in VR, but I think that this is a pretty big barrier for a lot of users that are not as comfortable in VR. In our early experiences demoing Dream to people, we noticed just how overwhelming going into VR is for a lot of people that have had either no exposure, or very little to it. We used to have computer keyboard pass-thru, and this could be something that we add back as we continue to iterate and make the experience better. In terms of desktop sharing - we used to have this capability, and it's still in the build but disabled. We pulled it back due to some inherent usability issues that we're working on as well as performance limits on low-end machines. Annotation (whiteboarding on shared content or a white screen) is next up on our road map, we just didn't have sufficient time to get it into the initial release - so excited to hear that's something you would be looking for. Similarly, 3D model import / review is something that we're about to tackle as well. One of the big things we're excited about exploring is actually using chromium to do this vs. forcing every client to download what could be a big file, or push performance limitations on a varied set of machines. Instead, we'd find a way to utilize WebRTC to stream the content in a way that provides a 3D review experience for all clients with no performance limit. On environments, we agree as well - right now we have one environment, and have 2 others in the pipeline. In the future, it'd be great to allow for 360 stereo videos to be used as the environment or allow teams to customize their environments if they've got the in house capabilities to do so! Thanks for the feedback, and hope you get a chance to try Dream out a bit and give us some hands on experience if you get a minute a well!

by idanb 8y ago

mattnewport 8y ago

Ah, ok, yeah that wasn't clear to me from the articles I saw, it sounded like desktop sharing. I went to the BigScreen talk at Oculus Connect and yeah it's pretty clear that their focus at the moment is on people watching video content together in VR but we have used it with some success for code reviews (desktop sharing is key there, I can jump between Visual Studio and the Unity Editor). Your keyboard sounds interesting and I'll have to check it out but to be honest it's not a big selling point for me as a touch typist: I don't have any trouble using my keyboard in VR. We do have some non touch typists on the team though and it's not always convenient to put your Touch controllers down to type so I can see it being useful. My ideal VR collaboration app would support at least solid desktop sharing support, well implemented VR whiteboards (including annotation on the shared desktop) and 3D sketching like Quill / Tilt Brush. We use whiteboards and 3D sketching in Rec Room but they're quite primitive. The sketching doesn't have to match a dedicated sketching app but should be better than Rec Room. It would also be useful to be able to easily import 3D assets for review, Dash support for GLTF is looking like a good implementation of that. Custom environments would also be useful for us so we could do collaborative design of environments for our own VR app.

gfodor 8y ago
You should give Hubs a try, it's a WebVR based collaboration and communication tool we're working on at Mozilla. Screen sharing is behind a feature flag (and not quite working atm) but you can bring in GLTF models, images, and do simple 3d drawing. Also, by being the browser, it avoids a lot of the installation and coordination steps of native apps, and works on phone and PC. https://hubs.mozilla.com https://hubs.mozilla.com
idanb 8y ago
I was actually at that session as well! It was a bit surprising for me to hear that they're taking such a strong stance with regards to shared movie watching, but generally it's always felt that Bigscreen has been tuned for gamers / entertainment type use cases. Totally hear you with regards to being comfortable touch typing while in VR, but I think that this is a pretty big barrier for a lot of users that are not as comfortable in VR. In our early experiences demoing Dream to people, we noticed just how overwhelming going into VR is for a lot of people that have had either no exposure, or very little to it. We used to have computer keyboard pass-thru, and this could be something that we add back as we continue to iterate and make the experience better. In terms of desktop sharing - we used to have this capability, and it's still in the build but disabled. We pulled it back due to some inherent usability issues that we're working on as well as performance limits on low-end machines. Annotation (whiteboarding on shared content or a white screen) is next up on our road map, we just didn't have sufficient time to get it into the initial release - so excited to hear that's something you would be looking for. Similarly, 3D model import / review is something that we're about to tackle as well. One of the big things we're excited about exploring is actually using chromium to do this vs. forcing every client to download what could be a big file, or push performance limitations on a varied set of machines. Instead, we'd find a way to utilize WebRTC to stream the content in a way that provides a 3D review experience for all clients with no performance limit. On environments, we agree as well - right now we have one environment, and have 2 others in the pipeline. In the future, it'd be great to allow for 360 stereo videos to be used as the environment or allow teams to customize their environments if they've got the in house capabilities to do so! Thanks for the feedback, and hope you get a chance to try Dream out a bit and give us some hands on experience if you get a minute a well!